Ken Haase
Is an engineer scientist philosopher that talked about the
singularity - a new concept to me - but basically how human intelligence
can aggregate into new "super intelligence" by means of communications
technology - and I guess a shared purpose. A slightly frightening, but
at the same time exiting perspective. Frightening because it implies to
some extent giving up your own personal interest (ego), lending your brain to a
bigger cause (something you might argue we do at work everyday anyway :-) Some examples

The Open Science movement - Michael Nielsen.

Timothy Gowers - Polymath project, crowdsoursing a match problem.

Social reading - change the way we read.

“The cost of an East African to go online will be reduced by 90% this year”